Georgetown neighbors talking trash with city

Battle to prevent transfer station coming to a council vote

KATHY MULAD, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

By KATHY MULADY, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Georgetown neighborhood activists Joel Ancowitz, left, and Kathy Nyland, sitting in the window of All City Coffee in old Georgetown, are fighting the city's plan to put a garbage transfer station in their neighborhood.
Photo: Joshua Trujillo/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

For two years, Georgetown resident Kathy Nyland has sacrificed weekends, vacation days and sleep trying to get the city of Seattle to see the folly of building a garbage transfer station on the edge of her neighborhood and sending as many as 600 garbage trucks rumbling past the historic brick buildings.

She wakes up at 3 a.m. and sends e-mails. She hauls around dull-as-dust reports that are hundreds of pages long about the city's garbage. Her purse is loaded with yellow markers to highlight important passages and facts.

Nyland estimates she has spent about 500 hours talking trash.

"I had no idea it would be more than two years that I would give to this," said Nyland, 40. "If I think about how much time I have spent on this, it will make me cry."

The Seattle City Council is expected to vote July 2 on whether to build a new transfer station near Georgetown and pass a proposed Zero Waste Strategy for the city. Nyland grows giddy when she talks about the freedom she hopes to have after that day.

Georgetown was among hundreds of sites that Seattle Public Utilities considered for its new intermodal transfer station. But about 14 months ago, the utility announced that South Corgiat Drive on the edge of Georgetown was its preferred location for the $70 million facility.

Georgetown neighbors, who all along thought the Harbor Island alternative made the most sense, were stunned.

The proposed facility would allow more efficient transfer of garbage from collection trucks onto the trains that haul it to a landfill in Arlington, Ore. The city spends about $20 million a year sending its garbage to the dump 250 miles away.

While many other Georgetown residents have been involved in the effort stop the facility from coming to the neighborhood, Nyland has led the charge -- learning more about garbage than she ever wanted to know.

Georgetown is a growing enclave for artists and musicians. But in recent years, residents have felt under siege, by a proposed commercial airport at Boeing Field, sex offender housing, and talk of requiring future strip clubs to locate nearby.

"It would be a shame if Seattle lost Georgetown because of its short-sightedness," said Ancowitz, 41.

Several residents wonder why it fell on their small neighborhood to find a solution to the city's garbage problem.

"It's not our job to try to figure it out, but nobody else was," she said. "We asked why is (the transfer station) needed?

"It is David versus a Goliath of professionals, experts and lobbyists who can attend all these meetings on the clock. They get paid. Neighbors have to do it in their own time, after work, or on their days off."

City Councilman Richard Conlin said he listened to citizens, compiled ideas from Georgetown neighbors, developed a plan and called for a study.

He will take comments on his proposed Zero Waste Strategy during a meeting Thursday.

"It is possible that it could eliminate the need for the new transfer station," Conlin said Tuesday.

The city's two other aging transfer stations -- in lower Wallingford and in South Park -- would be updated and expanded as part of the plan, whether or not the new transfer station is built.

Nyland said when she grew up in San Francisco, it was natural to recycle and reuse. She carried canvas bags to the grocery store.

"I don't recall talking about these things. We simply did them," she said.